Renewal season is here, and I know what a lot of agents are about to do, because I used to do it. Click through the cheapest online CE you can find at 11 at night, get the certificate, never think about it again.
I am a millennial. I would rather text or email you than get on a phone call, and for years, I skipped industry events on purpose. A room full of real estate agents was not my idea of a good use of a Tuesday.
I have been teaching CE and PLE classes since 2020, and it changed how I see this. What you are buying when you take it live is not the material. You can read the material. It is one of the few times each year that you spend two hours in a room full of agents from other firms with nothing to sell each other.
4 things the live room gives you that the online course cannot
1. You find out there is more than one right way
Inside your own firm, you hear one version of how things are done. Your agents, your broker, your office culture, and after a while, that starts to feel like the way the business works.
Spend two hours with agents from five other firms, and you find out your way is one way, not the way. I am not talking about right and wrong. I am talking about watching somebody describe a completely different approach to the same situation and land exactly where you would have.
Ethics classes are where this shows up most. You will hear five versions of how people handled the same kind of problem, and some of them will be nothing like yours.
2. The conversation starts without you
Here is what happens in almost every class I teach. Somebody brings up a situation they ran into. Somebody else recognizes it and jumps in. Then a third person adds a wrinkle, and it ripples out from there.
Those agents would never have crossed paths otherwise. Different firms, different offices, different parts of the market. Twenty minutes in, they are comparing notes and walking out with somebody new to call.
That is the part that gets me. We spend real money chasing this exact thing. Conference registration, flights, hotel, the workshop that promised a room full of people worth knowing. Your CE requirement puts you in that room for the price of a class you already have to take.
No online module is going to do that for you.
3. You do not have to say anything
I have students who have never once spoken up in my class and keep coming back every cycle.
They are not getting less out of it. They are listening. Hearing how other people in your industry think, outside of a transaction where you are on opposite sides, is its own kind of education.
If the reason you keep picking the online version is that you do not want to be called on, take the live class and sit in the back. That counts.
4. You get access to somebody who has to answer
The person at the front of the room has to know the material well enough to defend it, and they are standing there for two hours with no reason to sell you anything.
I will say something here that I think the industry does not say out loud enough: There is a version of this where the instructor is working the room, sizing up agents and treating a classroom like a recruiting event. That is completely inappropriate, and agents can smell it immediately.
What should happen is simpler. When somebody asks me how I would handle something, I tell them, and then I tell them there are always multiple ways to approach it. I am not there to coach another firm’s agents or to go looking for what they are doing wrong. If you are knowledgeable and easy to talk to, people will ask. That is the whole job.
Take it live this cycle
Online CE is fine. It is legal, it counts, and if your schedule genuinely does not allow a live class, take the online one, and do not feel bad about it.
But this is not an easy market right now, and it is not about to get easier. The agents who handle it well are going to be the ones comparing notes on what is actually working, not the ones sitting alone with their own firm’s version of everything. We serve our clients better when we are talking to each other.
I was the last person who was ever going to tell you to go sit in a room with a bunch of other agents. I am telling you now. Spend the two hours.
Kyle Crawford is VP of Strategy for Century 21 New Millennium. Get connected on LinkedIn and Instagram.
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the contributor and separate from the Inman newsroom.
